"Yahooty" - Origin and definition

[Jerome Foster]

"Where's Yehudi?" was a tagline on the Bob Hope radio show in the forties. May have had somehing to do with:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd go away.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Joan Houston Hall 
  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
  Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2000 7:35 AM
  Subject: "Yahooty" - Origin and definition


  Can anyone help Mr. Caraway? DARE has only one bit of anecdotal corroboration.

  >>>>

    X-Sender: jcaraway1 at pop-server.austin.rr.com
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    Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 19:48:48 -0600
    To: jdhall at facstaff.wisc.edu
    From: Jim Caraway <jcaraway1 at austin.rr.com>
    Subject: "Yahooty" - Origin and definition
    Cc: lvonschn at facstaff.wisc.edu

    Hello.

    Since I retired in 1993 I've been writing on a Journal at the request of my family, in which I've tried to set down all the recollections I can remember growing up in Mills County, Texas during the depression as a boy. One of the things I remember was the use of the word, "yahooty", pronounced "yea" (as in, "Yea shall know the truth, ...") "hooty". It was used in the context of a fictitious or imaginary person, like under the following circumstance: Someone says, "Who took the last piece of pie?" And I'd say "Yahooty took it." when in fact it was I who took it. A sort of scapegoat. Then, recently I was watching a rerun of an episode from the TV series, "The Waltons", and the name, Yahooty, came up again. This time it was used in the context of the name of the little man in the refrigerator who turns off the light when the door is closed.

    My question is do you have any information on this word, or do you have any idea where I could get a true definition of its use and origin? I've searched the internet without success.

    I'm not talking about the word, yahoo, which when I was growing up meant an uncouth person, lout, brute, or person lacking sensibility, and which originated with Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels.

    Nor am I talking about the word, yahudi, (in Arabic-speaking or Muslim countries) or yehudi (in the U.S. and Israel), which simply means a Jew, in English or in Hebrew. Since Jews frequently are scapegoats, there could be a relationship between words here, but I doubt that was the case when I was growing up.

    I noticed that the latter volumns of D.A.R.E. (containing words beginning with the letter "Y") have not been published. Am I correct?

    I'm not really sure of the spelling of yahooty; it could be yeehooty, or yeahooty. Would appreciate your comments. Thanks.



    -
    jcaraway1 at austin.rr.com, Austin, Texas.
    Please visit my home web site at:
    http://home.austin.rr.com/jcaraway1/
    Also, Please visit my genealogy web site at:
    http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/c/a/r/James-C-Caraway/




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